without reproach

washington square park, ny, ny, 30 april 2007
odawas -->alleluia

it was a new year and a new time, and there was a new hallelujah. the kind of song for both active and inactive listening...so effected, so effective if you paid attention and turned it up loud, but set very low, it's a mix of rumbles and whistles and something quite unrelenting. it was february, and i waited, sucking down almost an entire whiskey&coke waiting for him at the bar. it was february, fat tuesday to be exact, and at 7pm the place was filled with drunk middle-agers, necks strewn with plastic colored beads, toasting the commencement of lent with shot after shot. i sat at a booth, luckily--it was one of those rare times to find a booth empty at this bar--reading and rereading an advertising booklet for southern comfort specifically for mardi gras, which included recipes with the liquor that i read and reread, finding them both repulsive and nearly unintelligible in my present state. it was february, and it was the very first "warm" day of the year. i remember exactly what i wore, which enthusiastically included on account of the favorable weather shoes without socks and a three-quarter length vintage jacket. all day i wouldn't admit i was nervous, but it was one of those days where nothing would satiate the edginess. i left my house to run errands three hours early, stopping at my mother's to pass some time. conversation nor television served as successful diversions, and i was quick to change the subject when she tried to point to the source of my agitation. i left for the post office, wasted time in the thrift store, used the bathroom at the coffee shop, tried on clothes at the vintage store, and the entire time--despite my very real skittishness--i did not believe that he would actually come. i sat, purposefully, with my back to the door, the drink quickly disappearing and my stomach turning from the soco recipes. he did come. at first, i didn't rise to greet him, and he gave me a look nearing insult. i got pretty drunk and can confidently say that i can't recall anything we talked about. he came in for a bit, and i turned up "alleluia" over and again. "how many times are you going to play that?" i heard new songs that would soon become my favorites, and with each one i was conscious of the increased weight attached, as it always had been with him. they were all indelibly burned into memory like tattoos you couldn't think twice about. i kept my distance. and no sooner than three days later after having not met for hundreds, he confessed at the brink of a shot of whiskey, "i'm going to miss you so much."